The free world is the new continent in cyberspace that we have built so we can live here in freedom. It's impossible to live in freedom in the old world of cyberspace, where every program has its feudal lord that bullies and mistreats the users. So, to live in freedom we have to build a new continent. Because this is a virtual continent, it has room for everyone, and there are no immigration restrictions. - Richard Stallman -

This tutorial shows how you can enable Compiz on a Linux Mint 12 Lisa desktop (the system must have a 3D- capable graphics card –).

I'm using an NVIDIA GeForce 8200 here). With Compiz you can use beautiful 3D effects like wobbly windows or a desktop cube on your desktop.

1 Preliminary Note

I have tried this on a desktop computer with an NVIDIA GeForce 8200. It should work the same way with all other NVIDIA graphics cards. Compiz is not supported on GNOME 3 yet, that's why this how-to is applicable only for the classic GNOME desktop.

To switch to the classic desktop, log out of your current session and click on the cogwheel icon next to your username in the log-in screen:

Select GNOME Classic from the dropdown-menu and log back in:

2 Enabling The NVIDIA Driver

To use 3D effects on an NVIDIA graphics card, we need the proprietary NVIDIA driver which we can install from the Additional Drivers tool. The Additional Drivers tool can be started from Applications > System Tools > System Settings > Additional Drivers:

The Additional Drivers tool should tell you that there are NVIDIA graphics drivers available for your system - select the recommended one.

To install it, click on Activate. You will be asked to type in your password afterwards:

The NVIDIA driver is now being downloaded and installed:

The Additional Drivers tool should now tell you that a system restart is required to activate the driver. Click on Close to leave the Additional Drivers tool but don't restart yet:

To make sure that your machine uses the proprietary NVIDIA graphics driver after the reboot, specify them in your xorg.conf file, which is located in /etc/X11. List this directory's contents to see if the file is present: